1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance
"DeadAndRusty" by iTopher
Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift
Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns
Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion
2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right through
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverberating
In your mind
And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding
From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving
And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds
3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings
Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration
4/
Here's synchronicity for you:
Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you
I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock
The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.
And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you
5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"
The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun
6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging
The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect
7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds
8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits
Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...
No matter that you felt betrayed by her
That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion
Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse
Excerpt from The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water was the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete."
Excerpt from A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee Williams
Blanche: I don't know you - I don't know you. I want to be - left alone - please! Matron: Now, Blanche! Echoes [rising and falling]: Now, Blanche - now, Blanche - now, Blanche! Stanley: You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles - unless it's the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?
[He crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself. The Matron steps boldly toward her. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. All the men spring to their feet. Stella runs out to the porch, with Eunice following to comfort her, simultaneously with the confused voices of the men in the kitchen. Stella rushes into Eunice;s embrace on the porch.]
Stella: Oh, my God, Eunice help me! Don't let them do that to her, don't let them hurt her! Oh, Go, oh, please God, don't hurt her! What are the doing to her? What are they doing?
[She tries to break from Eunice's arms.]
Eunice: No, honey, no, no, honesy. Stay here. Don't go back in there. Stay with me and don't look.
"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
-Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"8 Fragments for Kurt Cobain"
Jim Carroll1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift
Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese whiz and guns
Whose triggers are shaped tenderly into a false lust
In timeless illusion
2/
The guitar claws kept tightening, I guess on your heart stem.
The loops of feedback and distortion, threaded right through
Lucifer's wisdom teeth, and never stopped their reverberating
In your mind
And from the stage
All the faces out front seemed so hungry
With an unbearably wholesome misunderstanding
From where they sat, you seemed so far up there
High and live and diving
And instead you were swamp crawling
Down, deeper
Until you tasted the Earth's own blood
And chatted with the Buzzing-eyed insects that heroin breeds
3/
You should have talked more with the monkey
He's always willing to negotiate
I'm still paying him off...
The greater the money and fame
The slower the Pendulum of fortune swings
Your will could have sped it up...
But you left that in a plane
Because it wouldn't pass customs and immigration
4/
Here's synchronicity for you:
Your music's tape was inside my walkman
When my best friend from summer camp
Called with the news about you
I listened them...
It was all there!
Your music kept cutting deeper and deeper valleys of sound
Less and less light
Until you hit solid rock
The drill bit broke
and the valley became
A thin crevice, impassible in time,
As time itself stopped.
And the walls became cages of brilliant notes
Pressing in...
Pressure
That's how diamonds are made
And that's WHERE it sometimes all collapses
Down in on you
5/
Then I translated your muttered lyrics
And the phrases were curious:
Like "incognito libido"
And "Chalk Skin Bending"
The words kept getting smaller and smaller
Until
Separated from their music
Each letter spilled out into a cartridge
Which fit only in the barrel of a gun
6/
And you shoved the barrel in as far as possible
Because that's where the pain came from
That's where the demons were digging
The world outside was blank
Its every cause was just a continuation
Of another unsolved effect
7/
But Kurt...
Didn't the thought that you would never write another song
Another feverish line or riff
Make you think twice?
That's what I don't understand
Because it's kept me alive, above any wounds
8/
If only you hadn't swallowed yourself into a coma in Roma...
You could have gone to Florence
And looked into the eyes of Bellinni or Rafael's Portraits
Perhaps inside them
You could have found a threshold back to beauty's arms
Where it all began...
No matter that you felt betrayed by her
That is always the cost
As Frank said,
Of a young artist's remorseless passion
Which starts out as a kiss
And follows like a curse
Excerpt from The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water was the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other. With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool. A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden. The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of transit, a thin red circle in the water.It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete."
Excerpt from A Streetcar Named Desire
by Tennessee WilliamsBlanche: I don't know you - I don't know you. I want to be - left alone - please!
Matron: Now, Blanche!
Echoes [rising and falling]: Now, Blanche - now, Blanche - now, Blanche!
Stanley: You left nothing here but spilt talcum and old empty perfume bottles - unless it's the paper lantern you want to take with you. You want the lantern?
[He crosses to dressing table and seizes the paper lantern, tearing it off the light bulb, and extends it toward her. She cries out as if the lantern was herself. The Matron steps boldly toward her. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. She screams and tries to break past the Matron. All the men spring to their feet. Stella runs out to the porch, with Eunice following to comfort her, simultaneously with the confused voices of the men in the kitchen. Stella rushes into Eunice;s embrace on the porch.]
Stella: Oh, my God, Eunice help me! Don't let them do that to her, don't let them hurt her! Oh, Go, oh, please God, don't hurt her! What are the doing to her? What are they doing?
[She tries to break from Eunice's arms.]
Eunice: No, honey, no, no, honesy. Stay here. Don't go back in there. Stay with me and don't look.
"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
-Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
go back (to love.)
to the tragedy connection.
onward to memories!